Fall River seminarian develops apologetics website

March 17, 2016. Cardinal George Pell speaks with CNA at the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on March 17, 2016. / null

Sydney, Australia, Mar 8, 2022 / 06:05 am (CNA).

People who took part in a “pile-on” against Cardinal George Pell are refusing to reconsider the case almost two years after the Australian Church leader’s acquittal, a speaker said on Tuesday.

Gerard Henderson, the author of “Cardinal Pell, The Media Pile-on and Collective Guilt,” told an audience in Sydney, Australia, on March 8 that this amounted to “intellectual cowardice” and, in some cases, “censorship.”

He argued that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia’s national broadcaster, and many of the country’s newspapers had overlooked critical accounts of the Pell trial and its coverage by the media.

“In short, members of the Pell pile-on will not engage in any reconsideration of the Pell case. In my view, that’s intellectual cowardice. In certain circumstances, it’s censorship,” he said.

Henderson was one of three speakers at the event “Lessons From the Pell Case – Two Years After the High Court Decision,” organized by the Sydney Institute, a current affairs forum.

Australia’s High Court unanimously overturned Pell’s conviction for five counts of alleged sexual abuse on April 7, 2020. The cardinal was released after more than 13 months of imprisonment and returned to Rome, where he had served as the Vatican’s economy czar.

Monica Doumit, the director of public affairs and engagement of the Archdiocese of Sydney, recalled that she was working for the archdiocese’s communications team when allegations against the cardinal were aired on an Australian television program.

Doumit, a columnist with The Catholic Weekly, a national Catholic newspaper, said that after the broadcast, she spoke over the phone to the cardinal, who was in Rome. As she returned home in the early hours, she received a call from a colleague at Pell’s behest. The caller explained that the cardinal was “really worried” about Doumit and wanted someone to check that she was OK.

“That’s the measure of the man we’re speaking about tonight,” she said. “And the reason I want to tell it is because when I look back on this, that’s actually the most important aspect of this for me, that first and foremost we’re talking about a man who cares deeply about other people.”

Doumit said that, two years on, many questions about the case remain unanswered. But she expressed hope that an ongoing Vatican finance trial would reveal why the Vatican sent more than $2 million to Australia during the Pell trial.

She said that Cardinal Angelo Becciu, one of the defendants, was connected to the transfer of funds from the Vatican to the tech company Neustar in Melbourne.

“So far witnesses at the trial have insisted that the money was sent to the Catholic bishops in Australia for the cardinal’s defense, but it’s demonstrably untrue,” she said. “We know the money went to Neustar.”

She noted that in a recent interview Pell challenged Becciu, who rejects all allegations of wrongdoing, to explain why the funds were transferred.

“Becciu has said he will not answer because to do so would be beneath the dignity of cardinals,” she said.

The third speaker, Father Frank Brennan, S.J., the author of “Observations on The Pell Proceedings,” described the proceedings against Pell as a “farce.”

Brennan, a human rights lawyer, said: “When we go with the mob with the highest level of judiciary, we forfeit the rule of law. That’s why the High Court majority, seven to nil, was so essential to restore the rule of law, for the good of bonafide complainants, for the good of victims, and for the good of citizens including those like Citizen Pell.”

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A young woman holds a pro-life sign during a rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2023, marking the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. / Joseph Portolano/CNA

Washington D.C., Jun 25, 2023 / 06:40 am (CNA).

Marking the first anniversary of Roe being overturned, a group of pro-life leaders rallied hundreds to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Saturday with the message that they were united around the fight for full, legal protection for the unborn from the moment of conception in all 50 states.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told those gathered on a sunny, hot summer day that while she celebrated the 25 states that have passed strong pro-life laws, “we are in fact living in a divided states of America” where “a person’s location determines if they will survive the abortion gauntlet as we did.”

Hawkins said the country must become “an America where every human being is recognized as the unrepeatable person as they are with equal rights and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed, not because of what state their mother resides in or if they are perceived to be convenient or the circumstances of their conception.”

Hawkins told CNA that pro-life leaders are uniting around the belief “that every human being is a human person at conception” and that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal justice clauses should be equally applied to persons in the womb.

“At a very minimum if you’re running for federal office, you should be able to acknowledge that abortion is a federal issue,” she said. “We want to see every presidential contender join with us to acknowledge what is so clearly written in the Fourteenth Amendment: that all human beings are human persons and deserve equal protection of our laws.” 

Lila Rose, president of the pro-life group Live Action, called the Fourteenth Amendment “one of the most beautiful notes in our national song” and lamented that “when it comes to preborn children we have failed to extend these protections.”

Rose called it a “tragic contradiction” that “while our society celebrates advancements in prenatal care and technology, we simultaneously deny personhood and rights, the personhood and rights of these very same children. It is inconceivable that we would selectively deny these rights to one group of human beings solely based on their location: the womb.”

Republican presidential candidate and former Vice President Mike Pence, who recently called on his fellow GOP presidential candidates to join him in backing a “minimum” nationwide 15-week abortion limit, made an appearance at the rally.

“As we celebrate this anniversary, let us here resolve that we will work and we will pray as never before to advance the cause of life in the laws of the land in every state in America. That we will support women in crisis pregnancies with resources and support for their care, for the unborn, and for the newborn as never before,” Pence said.

“We stand for the babies and their unalienable right to life,” he said, pledging that he and his family “will never rest and never relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the land.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-life America, shared words of advice for the growing list of 2024 presidential candidates: “Get your act together. Figure out what you’re for and advance it. Don’t wait,” she urged.

“We have consensus in this country,” she added. “Start with that and be the president you’re called to be in justice and love for moms and justice and love for their babies.” Consistent Gallup polling shows that the majority of Americans would prefer to limit abortion to the first three months of pregnancy.

There were many young people in the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial, including Katriel Nyman, a 17-year-old from Washington state who is with Students for Life Tri-Cities. She told CNA that it was “really encouraging to see a bunch of people who believe in rights from conception.”

She said she’d “like to see more pro-lifers continue to persevere through this” post-Dobbs fight because “even if abortion isn’t legal in your state, you should be fighting for the rights of infants that are soon to be born in other states.”

Sameerah Munshi, a recent graduate of Brown University who is interning with the Religious Freedom Institute, held a sign with a verse from the Quran about the sanctity of life that read “We have dignified the children of Adam.”

She told CNA that she wanted to make her voice heard as a Muslim who believes, based on her faith, that abortion is wrong in most cases. She said many Muslims followers feel, as she does, that life begins “in the first couple weeks after conception.”

Munshi said that in the year since the Dobbs decision, “a lot of people that I know who don’t have strong opinions on abortion have been coming out either in favor or against” abortion. She sees it as valuable that there’s more discourse about the abortion issue and people are “coming to more conclusions for themselves as opposed to maybe rhetoric that they’ve seen in the news or rhetoric that they feel has been a part of their political platform.”

Jessica Newell, a Catholic student who is interning with Live Action and entering her third year at Coastal Carolina University, told CNA that “it’s so important for people who are indoctrinated by this culture to learn the truth about biology and the truth about God and that they’re made in the image of God.” 

She emphasized that the pro-life movement still has so much to do and part of that work is “letting people know that they’re loved, that is a big step in changing the culture to a culture of life.”

Melissa Ohden, who survived a saline-infusion abortion at 31 weeks gestation, stood at the rally alongside her oldest daughter Olivia, 15, and a sign which read “Babies survive abortions. I am one of them.”

“This was a very personal thing for Roe to be overturned,” she told CNA, “It is a day that we can celebrate, but it has not been a chance to pause, take our breath, it has been a time of continuing to hit the ground running.”

In her work heading the Abortion Survivors Network, Ohden said that since the Dobbs decision she’s heard from “more women than ever reaching out to us after their chemical abortions have failed.” She said it’s important to reach moms who are vulnerable to chemical abortions which make up the majority of abortions in the country.

Ohden said that since Dobbs the pro-life movement “has continued to be the side that is providing resources and support whether it’s in communities, at the state level, pushing for federal policy that supports mothers and children and families in a greater way.”

Her daughter Olivia said it was “amazing” to be at the rally with her mom and called the issue an emotional one because “people like my mom should be protected no matter who they are, where they are.”

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Lawyers for an alleged abuse victim in the Diocese of Springfield in Massachusetts have asked the state’s chief justice to assign a special judge from outside western Massachusetts to the case, citing a potential for […]